


Sunshine

by vass



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Flash Fic, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-04
Updated: 2015-05-04
Packaged: 2018-03-28 22:25:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3871996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vass/pseuds/vass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sooner or later, Breq is going to run out of space stations to break. But she retrieves Seivarden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunshine

When I reached her in the centre of the palace, the instance of Anaander Mianaai to the right of Seivarden said “I warned you –” and I engaged the communications blocker, watched carefully for a split second, then shot everyone but the person I’d come for.

Seivarden, who had been sitting still and wide-eyed since I’d entered the room, stood up and fetched one of the cushions the Anaanders had been sitting on. She pulled the embroidered slipcover off, and then the clean linen lining underneath, and handed it to me.

I raised an eyebrow.

“You have something just… there.” She gestured to encompass my face, neck, and hands. True enough. I started wiping, probably ineffectually. “Let me,” she said, and took the linen back again. I stood still while she cleaned the gore off.

“At least you’re not injured this time,” she said, scrubbing at a patch of dried blood.

She took a step back to check her work, then stopped moving, holding the bloody cloth in one gloved hand. Apart from that, and a little fine red spray on her right sleeve, she was clean and unharmed. “Time to go,” I told her.

“Not that I’m sorry to see you, but how did you know?” she said. “She was going to put ancillary implants in me, make me part of her. She said she’d done it before. This whole time, I’ve been expecting every minute that she’d hold me down and cut my head open… Breq, how do you know she didn’t?” She was shaking.

For a lot of reasons, not least that Anaander had not disconnected Seivarden’s communications implant from _Mercy of Kalr_ , and I had monitored as closely as I could. She had meant me to. Still, it had been four days, and they had been far enough from Ship that there had been a lag. I could not have been sure until I’d blocked their communications and watched for one body that didn’t move either like the others or quite like the officer I’d known so long – who, without the rest of her, would not have the skill to pretend. I would have killed her along with the others, and not ventured to find out who woke up after the implants came out again. “I’ll tell you later,” I said.

I stepped in close, pressed a brief, firm kiss to her forehead. “I’m sorry you had to wait so long.” Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.

“Come on. We have a lot to talk about,” I said. I took her arm, and led her out past the bodies, to the limbs and wreckage in the antechamber where I’d stashed our two pressure suits, and through there to the floating, airless rubble that was the remainder of the rest of the station, and the shuttle waiting beyond.

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to [this prompt](http://otpdisaster.tumblr.com/post/104930338090/person-a-being-held-hostage-in-a-fortress-and): "Person A being held hostage in a fortress and Person B violently leaving a mess of carnage in their wake in order to get to them. Covered in blood and questionable pieces of enemy remains, Person B finally makes it to Person A in the center of the wreckage and gives them a gentle peck on the forehead before apologizing for the wait."
> 
> Title is a reference to a Tumblr text post joke.


End file.
